The farmers were allegedly shot by the private guards of a corporation whom the agrarian reform beneficiaries accused of land grabbing.
TAGUM CITY, Davao del Norte — Not less than five farmers were wounded in a shooting incident which greeted Tagum City on December 12, Monday morning.
According to a report in inquirer.net, the victims were on their way to harvest bananas in a plantation in Tagum City when armed men opened fire at them.
The report said that Monico Dayahan, a member of the Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association Incorporated (MARBAI), narrated that at around 7 a.m. about 50 of them, all were farmers, were walking toward a banana plantation when a group of ten private security guards allegedly from Lapanday Foods Corporation approached them and opened fire without any warning.
Dayahan said that they did not expect the shooting because they were only on their way to harvest bananas when they were shot.
The Lapanday Foods Corporation and MARBAI are involved in a land dispute case after the farmers, who are mostly agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in the area, accused the company of grabbing farmland from them.
MARBAI stressed that the agrarian reform beneficiaries are being dispossessed of the land supposedly awarded by the government and are forced to live in what it called “deplorable” hunger and poverty.
Last week, at least farmers manned a barricade after their demands remained unresolved for years already.
They burst to assert their ownership over 145 hectares of land which they said remains under the control of the aforementioned agri-business company, six years after the government ordered its distribution.
Most of those who demonstrated were members of MARBAI and joined by peasant groups, who forcefully moved their way through the gates of Lapanday, which is owned by the Lorenzo family.
The wounded victims were rushed to the nearest medical facility for necessary medical treatment but the situation in the crime scene remains volatile.